The sense of horror and helplessness in the face of unrelenting madness is becoming overwhelming.

Yesterday it was a seder in a seaside hotel in Israel. But it might as well have been a Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner in New York, or Florida, or somewhere in the Midwest, or California. Or a family gathering in Saudi Arabia or Sudan. Because that is what's threatened in a world ruled by terror. You sit down with your relatives and closest friends for the timeless ritual and mutual comfort of a family meal, and then all is destroyed in a savage instant.

Some things are so egregious, so evil, that the humanity in those of us who are reasonably normal cannot help but cry out in both alarm and outrage. And that outrage comes, I think, from a clear sense of the betrayal of our humanity that is inherent in all acts of terror.

We are in a state of affairs that is outside politics and can't be solved by war. I don't mean that we shouldn't seek a political solution in the Middle East. And I don't mean that the United States or Israel or any other country should not retaliate when attacked. But ultimately the many tribes that inhabit this earth are going to have to figure out a way to forge some workable agreements on how we treat one another.

The carnage is everywhere. All I have to do, if I ever need a reminder, is take a walk downtown to that plaza of perennial sorrow that was once the site of the World Trade Center. They are still pulling bodies from the ruins, each body a heartache for those who live on. What is to be made of such sorrow? What did the terrorists achieve?

In India last month, enraged Muslims, in yet another blood feud without end, set fire to a train loaded with Hindu activists. More than a dozen children were among the 58 or so dead. The train attack was followed, as night follows day, by rioting in which Muslims were killed by the score, including many who were burned alive.

Yesterday it was Netanya. I was putting together a column on the governor's race in New York when the stories started coming over the wires. Another suicide bomber. Several Israelis dead. A hundred or more injured. As horrible as it sounded, it was like a replay of so many others.

"This callous, this cold-blooded killing, it must stop," said President Bush.

But how?

We know the drill now, not just in the Middle East but everywhere, including here. The politicians bellow and missiles are launched and bombs are dropped. And while all that may be unavoidable, it will not stop the terror.

That incredibly daunting task falls to the rest of us, to the ordinary citizens of the world who — whether we like it or not — have no choice but to face up to this challenge to our humanity.

Americans mobilized, and quickly, when the terrorists struck on Sept. 11. Relief funds were raised, volunteers went immediately into action and the military readied for war. What is also needed is a mobilization of ordinary people, in the U.S. and beyond, who are committed to the idea of stopping these insane outbreaks of violence and terror all around the globe.

Ordinary people, like students and firefighters and religious leaders and business executives and artists and nurses and college professors and doctors and librarians. You do this by engaging the issue, by learning all you can about this scourge of violence that threatens to hold all of us hostage and sully the future for generations to come. And then you need to talk about it, with people you know, people you respect. And then comes the hard part, which is to try to figure out ways in a spirit of good will to speak across the divide, to people who are different, even strange.

The terrorists will not achieve their ends by blowing up innocents. And we will not be able to bomb the terrorists into submission. Atrocities like yesterday's hideous bombing in Israel cannot be allowed to occur with impunity. But it is time for all of us to begin searching for alternatives, to take those first tentative steps toward insuring that a world inhabited by billions of people remains reasonably hospitable to life.

This is not television. This is about surviving in the real world. We need to overcome our feelings of helplessness, and channel our rage and our anguish toward constructive ends.